A surge protector is a device placed in an electrical circuit to prevent the passage of dangerous surges and spikes that could damage electronic equipment. One particularly useful application of surge protectors is in antenna transmission and receiving systems. In such antenna systems, a surge protector is generally connected in line between a main feeder coaxial cable and a jumper coaxial cable. During normal operation of the antenna system, microwave and radio frequency signals pass through the surge protector without interruption. When a dangerous surge occurs in the antenna system, the surge protector prevents passage of the dangerous surge from one coaxial cable to the other coaxial cable by diverting the surge to ground.
One type of surge protector for antenna systems has a tee configuration including a coaxial through-section and a straight coaxial stub connected perpendicular to a middle portion of the coaxial through-section. One end of the coaxial through-section is adapted to interface with a mating connector at the end of the main feeder coaxial cable, while the other end of the coaxial through-section is adapted to interface with a mating connector at the end of the juniper coaxial cable. Both the coaxial through-section and the straight coaxial stub include inner and outer conductors. At the tee junction between the coaxial stub and the coaxial through-section, the inner and outer conductors of the coaxial stub are connected to the respective inner and outer conductors of the coaxial through-section. At the other end of the straight coaxial stub, the inner and outer conductors of the coaxial stub are connected together creating a short. The short is indirectly connected to a grounding device, such as a grounded buss bar, by some sort of clamp.
The physical length from the junction at one end of the coaxial stub and the short at the other end of the coaxial stub is approximately equal to one-quarter of the center frequency wavelength for a desired narrow band of microwave or radio frequencies. This desired band of operating frequencies travels entirely through the coaxial through-section virtually unaffected by the discontinuities associated with the coaxial stub. Undesired low frequencies which do not meet the wavelength criterium, i.e., surges, do not pass entirely through the coaxial through-section. Instead, these low frequencies travel from the coaxial through-section to the tee junction and through the coaxial stub to the short, where the surge is passed to ground by some sort of grounding device.
A drawback of the above tee-shaped surge protector is that the mating ends of the coaxial through-section necessitate the use of coaxial cable connectors on both the main feeder cable and the jumper cable. As stated above, the ends of the coaxial through-section are designed to mate with coaxial cable connectors of the respective main feeder cable and jumper cable.
Another drawback of the tee-shaped surge protector is that the tee configuration makes the surge protector relatively bulky. This bulkiness, in turn, makes it difficult to mount several such surge protectors side-by-side in an antenna system requiring more than one surge protector. A related drawback of the tee-shaped surge protector is that it is difficult to install the surge protector because the short at the end of the coaxial stub must be indirectly connected to a grounding device by a clamp or the like. The use of a clamp to connect the short to a grounding device increases the amount of equipment required for installation. In addition, when several surge protectors are mounted side-by-side, the respective clamps of these surge protectors tend to physically interfere with one another.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a surge protector connector which overcomes the above-noted drawbacks associated with the tee-shaped surge protector.